Once the shade had given them the name, Harry knew there was no time to waste.
She had never Apparated with more than one other person before, and due to the urgency of the situation she honestly didn't think anything of it until they had landed at the Apparition point outside Stark's home.
"Did you just Side-Along three people?"
Phil and Ms. Potts stood a few feet away. It was Ms. Potts who had spoken, and it took a second for the full import of her words to reach Harry's brain. Once they did, she quickly turned to her coworkers, but to her relief none of them appeared to be Splinched or otherwise affected by the distance Apparition had taken them.
"Of course she did," Ron said, with a proud scoff. "She's Harry Potter."
Sometimes Harry really wanted to punch Ron, but this time she resisted in favor of getting back to business.
"It's Stane," she told Phil, who was considerably less surprised than she expected.
"We found some evidence ourselves," he said curtly, spinning on his heel and walking briskly towards Stark's mansion. "Let's go; Stane left SI ahead of us and Stark's been unreachable."
Harry knew that Phil's abrupt manner was only a sign of his concern, and she didn't take it personally. She and her team hurried after him and Ms. Potts, the atmosphere of anxiousness only increasing as they noticed that there was a car parked in front of the entrance, and the door sat disturbingly open.
"That's Rhodes' car," Ms. Potts said, which made Harry feel a little better, until she realized it probably meant Stane had come and gone already. It was anyone's guess what they were about to walk into, then, she thought, and slid her wand from its holster. From the corner of her eye, she saw the rest of her team do the same.
They entered the house slowly, Phil leading the way with his gun up and ready.
Other than a broken lamp on the floor in the living room, there appeared to be no one there.
"Jarvis should've said something to us by now," Harry murmured as the silence of the house descended around them.
Phil nodded and opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again as they all heard feet coming up the stairs that went down to the workshop. At almost the same time, Ms. Potts' phone began to buzz in her pocket. Harry kept one eye on her as she shakily pulled the phone from her pocket, and the other on the entrance to the stairs.
"Rhodes," Ms. Potts said as she read the screen and promptly answered it.
Harry was close enough to her that she heard Colonel Rhodes' greeting from the phone against Ms. Potts' ear and echoing up from the stairwell in front of them.
"Pep, you won't believe what Tones just —"
The Colonel had reached the top of the steps and stopped, looking comically bewildered at the sight in front of him.
"Or maybe you would," he said slowly.
Rhodes was quick and succinct in his debrief.
Jarvis had not greeted him when he entered the house, so he'd continued into the house in much the same manner as they had, except he'd encountered Stark dragging himself across his own workshop floor trying to reach the old arc reactor that Miss Potts had set in a display case.
With no small amount of horror, Harry realized that, given the evidence of the broken lamp in the living room, Stark had been forced to go quite a distance without anything in his chest.
Rhodes had come into the workshop as one of the bots, realizing Stark's goal, had helpfully shattered the case, and then the Colonel had taken over from there, removing the bits of glass from the old reactor and slotting it into his friend's empty chest.
"Then he tells me it was Obadiah fucking Stane who'd ripped it out of him, and he was taking off in that armor before I could say anything."
"Tony, no," Miss Potts groaned.
"So, Stark's going after Stane? Any idea where he went?" Harry asked.
"Sector 16," said Phil, fingers tapping swiftly on his phone. "I've got some SHIELD agents setting up a perimeter at SI; they've just spotted Stane and Stark."
"Okay, what're we going to be Apparating into, here?" Harry asked, taking a deep breath and organizing her thoughts. Going into a situation blind and unprepared was perhaps the easiest way to get killed, and she did not intend to lose anyone today.
"Stane was building a suit much like Stark's, but with significantly more firepower," Phil told them.
That was not good, Harry thought, connecting the pieces. So, Stane had stolen the Arc reactor to power his version of the suit, and she was sure that he wasn't sitting down and having a cup of tea with Stark now.
"S'gonna be like bringing down a giant," Ron said, looking contemplative. "What with the magic coming out of the reactor."
Ron wasn't wrong, but Harry was fairly confident that they could handle it, especially if she didn't hold back like she usually did. It wasn't very often that she got to relax the tight hold she had on her magic.
"Right," she said. "Let's pair up and move out. Coordinates?"
She looked at Phil hopefully as the others paired off to prepare for Apparition. He was absorbed in his phone for a few more seconds before looking up.
"Here," he said, turning the screen so that everyone could see. Harry took a moment to fix the numbers to her memory and then offered Phil her arm.
"Shall we?"
"By all means."
